


Men and Lads

by Dusk Peterson (duskpeterson)



Series: Life Prison [8]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Guards, Historical AU, Historical Fantasy, Maryland (AU), Mid-Atlantic, Multi, Original Fiction, Original Slash, Trains, Victorian, characters of color or characters of ethnicity, class/rank themes, don't need to read other stories in the series, family themes, friendship fiction, hoboes, holiday gift fic, male/male attraction, male/male platonic feelings, mentor fiction, original gen, prisoner fiction, prompt fiction, race/ethnicity themes, see my profile for story warnings, servant fiction, spirituality themes, tramps
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-14
Updated: 2012-02-24
Packaged: 2017-10-31 04:50:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 17,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/340092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/duskpeterson/pseuds/Dusk%20Peterson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two guards. Two prisoners. A multitude of problems.</p><p>
  <b>"He knew what his prisoner's expression would be before he saw it: a mixture of apprehension, wary hope, and the expression he had come to fear most of all – determination."</b>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shadowsonthesun](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowsonthesun/gifts).



> "The punk [young tramp] rolled up his big blue eyes  
> And said to the jocker [older tramp that the punk followed], "Sandy,  
> I've hiked and hiked and wandered too,  
> But I ain't seen any candy.  
> I've hiked and hiked till my feet are sore  
> I'll be God damned if I hike any more  
> To be * * * * * * * *  
> In the Big Rock Candy Mountains."
> 
> —Final verse of the [original version](http://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=4571&686090#686090) of Harry McClintock's _[Big Rock Candy Mountain](http://www.ianbenjaminkenny.com/videos/the-big-rock-candy-mountains.html)_ (about 1897), as quoted – and censored – by folklorist John Greenway. 
> 
> o—o—o
> 
> "The decent hoboes were protective as long as they were around, but there were times when I fought like a wildcat or ran like a deer to preserve my independence and my virginity. I whittled my way out of two or three jams with a big barlow knife, and on one occasion I jumped into the darkness from a boxcar door – from a train that must have been doing better than thirty miles an hour." 
> 
> —Harry McClintock on his experiences as a teenage tramp in the 1890s. 
> 
> o—o—o
> 
> "There has to be a first time for everything; for friendship as well as love; and first friendship, once given, can no more be given again than first love." 
> 
> —Rosemary Sutcliff: _Blood Vow_.   
>   

He knew what his prisoner's expression would be before he saw it: a mixture of apprehension, wary hope, and the expression he had come to fear most of all – determination.

He said, before his prisoner could speak, "I'm going away." 

His prisoner stared. "Away?" 

"Yes." He told himself that the prisoner's growing look of concern was only due to the implications of being transferred to a strange guard. "I've arranged for Keane to provide service to you." 

It was the old phrase, the source of many jokes at Mercy Life Prison, but his prisoner didn't smile. "When will you be back?" 

"Don't give him any trouble." He needed to get out of here before he did something he'd regret. "I've told him you are not difficult." 

"But—" 

He let the sound of the barred door clashing behind him be his answer. He could feel his prisoner's eye on him as he crossed the fire-pit area on his way to the level's exit. 

_Not difficult._ It was a lie, in actual fact. His prisoner was more difficult than anyone he had ever guarded in his life. That was why he needed to go away.   
 


	2. Chapter One

_The year 385, the eleventh month._  
 

After the riot, Compassion Life Prison's surviving prisoners – and surviving guards – were lodged temporarily in a building at the crossroads of the nearest town, Ammippian Springs. The town itself – as bored guards had long since realized – offered nothing of interest to a city man. None of that area of western Mip did. In order to reach anything even mildly interesting in the way of nightlife, one had to travel by buggy or wagon to the closest city, Hagerstown, which was more than ten miles away. Mip's capital was even further away; travelling there by road was a matter of hours. So the guards, as they had for centuries, made their own entertainment. 

Thomas, leaning his cheek against a cool bar of the cell as he listened to the satisfied grunts of the prison's day supervisor, wondered whether he would ever be free. 

He looked around again. The prison cell – four walls of bars, with an iron foundation and roof – had been placed in the holding prison's attic, which could be reached only through a ladder leading up from the second floor. The ladder end of the attic was where the guards had placed a wardrobe that could hardly be termed spacious, but it was adequate for the job that the guards had in mind. This was where they took the prisoners they had chosen as their lads – an old custom, probably as old as Compassion Prison itself. 

The prisoners in the cell were doing their very best to ignore the current re-enactment of that custom, though every now and then, some of the more vulnerable prisoners – the "lads," as they were termed – glanced over at the wardrobe with wide eyes, obviously envisioning what was taking place. None of them looked at Thomas, standing on the other side of the bars. 

He was used to being ignored by now. He took another look at the "men" among the prisoners. There were four of them now, two more than there had been the previous week, for new prisoners continued to arrive. Despite being natural rivals for one another's property – food, blankets, and lads – the prison's men appeared to be getting along reasonably well. Perhaps the horrors of the riot had taught the prisoners that much. 

The only other person in the attic, standing on Thomas's side of the bars, was Starke, who was busy lighting up a cigarette as he guarded the wardrobe. Smoking on duty was against life-prison regulations. Thomas wondered whether he dare remind Starke of that. 

Starke noticed him and silently offered his cigarette case. "No," replied Thomas. "It's against regulations." 

Starke slipped the case back into his jacket pocket, took a long moment blowing a ring of smoke toward the ceiling, and finally said, "I remember the day I taught you that regulation. You'd just been fitted for your first long pants, and you were eager to have your first smoke, in order to show how manly you were." 

Thomas tried to think of a reply to this – he was acutely aware of the prisoners listening in, with grins on their faces – but at that moment, Pugh emerged from the closet, with his right hand grasping hard the nape of a dazed-looking prisoner, while his left hand buttoned up his fly. 

Starke, without a word, took the prisoner from him. Thomas – bound as always to follow regulations – lifted his coiled whip from his belt. There had been occasional trouble, he heard, with the transfer of prisoners in and out of the cell; the humiliation of the riot was still fresh in the prisoners' mind. 

There was no trouble this time, though. The prisoners looked at Thomas, and they looked at his whip, and they came nowhere near the cell door as Starke unlocked it and thrust the shaken lad inside. 

The prisoners' mute looks of respect for his skill with a whip went a little ways in restoring Thomas's confidence. He waited until the cell door was locked and Starke was out of reach of the prisoners; then he returned his whip to his belt and said, "May I have a word with you, Mr. Pugh?" 

"Save it for when I'm on duty." Pugh turned toward Starke. "Give me some baccer, for love of the gods. I'm parched." 

Starke offered his cigarette case again. Thomas said, "Smoking on duty is against regulations." 

"So?" Pugh did not look his way as he pressed his cigarette against the glowing end of Starke's cigarette. "The Keeper isn't above smoking a bit of baccer while he's on duty. And the Keeper takes lads, if that's the lecture you were planning to give me. Are you saying that you know better how to behave than the Keeper of Compassion Prison?" 

Thomas forced himself to count backwards from ten. He knew, of course, from whence Pugh's resentment arose. Pugh had long been the day supervisor of Compassion Prison; by right of rank, he should have risen to the rank of night supervisor and received the title of Assistant Keeper after the previous Assistant Keeper died in the riot. Instead, that rank and title had been taken by a youth who was still in his journeyman years: the Keeper's son, Thomas. 

It would do no good to remind Pugh that he had been away on a foreign holiday at the time that the riots occurred, and that an immediate appointment had needed to be made. It would do even less good to say that the appointment had been a punishment. How could Thomas explain that his father had appointed him Assistant Keeper and night supervisor, years before Thomas ought to have risen so high in rank, as a way of burdening him with responsibility that would likely crush him? 

Starke was watching Thomas steadily. Thomas suspected he had guessed the truth; Starke had witnessed father and son enter into their grim battles with each other more than once. But not even Starke would follow Thomas's orders, when they went against long-standing prison custom. Not even him. 

Thomas said, "The Keeper left me in charge of this holding prison while Compassion's building is rebuilt, Mr. Pugh." 

"As Assistant Keeper." Pugh turned away. "That gives you the right to determine at what hour our shifts exchange. It doesn't give you the right to overturn centuries' worth of customs. Good night, Starke. I'll see you at work tomorrow." And he swung himself down onto the ladder leading to the second floor, never looking Thomas's way. 

Thomas was left burning with rage and humiliation. But if nothing else, he had inherited his father's ability to sound cool under pressure. "Where are the night guards, Mr. Starke? They should be on duty by now." 

"You tell me." Starke blew out another ring. "If you want to keep matters in order here, stop wasting your time with trivialities. Make sure that the night guards relieve us on time from our duty. They're your responsibility." 

Thomas let his cool gaze travel over to Starke. "You meant to say 'sir,' I'm sure." 

Starke merely snorted. Stubbing out the final remains of his cigarette in the guards' ashtray – placed there by order of the Keeper himself – he came forward and said in a soft voice, "Look, Tom, Pugh's a pig, but he's right in what he said: You don't have the authority to do anything except supervise the night guards and make sure that Pugh supervises the day guards. Maybe you can keep the night guards from smoking on duty. Maybe. But if you try to do more than that, the guards are going to laugh at you. Even more than they're already laughing at you." 

He could feel an aching in his throat. "Are you laughing at me?" 

Starke shook his head. "You want the best for this prison. You always have. You're an idealist, and that's not a bad thing in a youth." He smiled, managing somehow to encompass in that smile all the superiority of being five years older than Thomas. "We're all idealists when we're young. We grow out of it. . . . I almost wish that you'd been at Compassion during the riot." 

"So do I." He managed to swallow the hard lump in his throat. "How is your shoulder?" 

Starke half-shrugged, using the shoulder that wasn't bandaged beneath his uniform. "Still keeps me awake at night. I'm told it will heal eventually, more or less. You want me to keep guard while you round up the stragglers? I won't be getting to sleep for hours anyway." 

It was impossible to stay angry at Starke, Thomas reflected as he worked his way down the ladder and then checked the empty bedrooms of the missing night guards. Starke was unfailingly protective of the boy whom Compassion's Keeper had entrusted to him, eight years before. 

But Thomas was no longer a boy. And he was finding it impossible to convince anyone at Compassion of that fact. 

It had been easier at Mercy . . . 

At that moment, as his thoughts turned toward Mercy Prison and all the longing that he held toward that life prison, the front door of the holding prison banged open. The missing night guards had returned. 

"Where have you been?" Thomas snapped. He had just made his way to the bottom of the stairs, in preparation for searching the main floor and the surrounding yard – perhaps even the rest of the town. 

The senior of the night guards, Chase, looked startled. "Following Pugh's orders," he replied. "He told me to pick up the new shipment." 

It was then that Thomas noticed the prisoner. 

o—o—o

_The year 393, the eleventh month._  
  

Given the number of train connections between Mercy Life Prison and his destination, he elected to hire a buggy to take him to Williamsport. He could have hired a buggy for the full trip, but he had no desire to have his presence traced that far. Instead, offering a tale about relatives in Williamsport, he paid off the buggy-driver. Then he went in search of a train headed west on the Western Mippite Railroad's newly built line to Cherry Run. 

But matters did not prove to be so easy. 

"Not yet, sir," said the station agent firmly as he counted the bills in his hand. 

"I thought your company advertised last summer that this new rail-line would have several passenger trains a day." He had to work very hard to keep sarcasm out of his voice. 

"Oh, yes." The agent smiled at him, his face alight from sun reflected off the nearby creek. "We expect lots of passengers to ride the new line in order to visit Clear Spring. For the orchard-picking, you know." The agent winked; the outlawed cock-fighting at Clear Spring was notorious among gamblers. "But we don't have more than one passenger train a day yet. Try us again in a month's time." 

Punching away that smug smile would go a long way to easing the tension that had been building up in him during the past few weeks, but it would not supply him with needed answers. Also, he reminded himself, he was not immune to arrest here, as he would be if he committed the same act against his prisoner. "Very well. Where may I hire a buggy?" 

But here he ran up against another barrier. Williamsport, for all its claims to be the crossroads of western Mip, had not yet established a buggy-hiring service. 

"Never needed one," declared the perpetually grinning agent. "We've got the trains. And before that, during the great migrations to Vovim, settlers brought their own wagons. Why, they say that, in the days before the settlers arrived, the Ammippian tribe made this town a part of its trail . . ." 

"Yes, yes," he said impatiently, since the agent seemed prepared to launch into ancient history, before the Old World had discovered the New World. "But this particular settler sent away his buggy, since he was unwise enough to trust the glittering advertisements of the Western Mippite Railroad. What can you do for me?" 

He had not, it seemed, succeeded in stripping sarcasm from his voice this time, for he saw a familiar look of truculence enter the agent's face. The agent said gruffly, "Might call a special for you." 

"Do that," he ordered. "I'll return in two-thirds of an hour." He had to get himself away from here before he did something that . . . Well, not that he would entirely regret smashing in the agent's face, but he couldn't afford to call attention to himself on this trip. 

Besides, he reminded himself, he could hardly descend upon his host with blood drying upon his knuckles, and then ask for help. 

He took a look at the road behind him: houses straggled up the hill to the town center. He shook his head. Williamsport was too near the capital; there was a chance he might meet someone he knew if he walked through the respectable part of town. Instead, he turned away and followed the railroad tracks down the wooded creek bank to the canal, in the direction of the western mountains. 

The canal was easy enough to sight from the depot: an aqueduct carried the canal boats over the creek. Near the aqueduct was a turning basin for the boats, accompanied by a short railroad track leading to a warehouse on the basin. He stood a while, watching coal being loaded from the boats onto freight cars. 

The day was cool – "headed toward Hell," as his father used to humorously put it, in the days before his only child had grown old enough to break his jaw, and be disinherited, and leave home to take up the surprisingly respectable occupation of prison guard. 

He supposed his parents still lived in Clear Spring, a town he would pass during his journey. He had no intention of stopping there. He didn't want to have to decide whether his new-found duty to the Boundaries required him to apologize to his drunken father and his slovenly mother. 

Canal-boat captains shouted cheerful insults at one another as craned buckets took coal from their boats. The boats no doubt brought the coal from mines in the mountains of western Mip. But he didn't so much as contemplate hiring one of the boats headed back west; the gossip range of canal captains was notorious. As for the freight cars, they were presumably headed east toward Hagerstown, or perhaps even as far as Balmer, the largest city in the Dozen Landsteads, over Mip's eastern border. 

But other freight cars would be headed west to pick up coal and coke from Cherry Run, the first town over western Mip's southern border with the Kingdom of Vovim, or perhaps grain from Big Pool, the westernmost station in the Magisterial Republic of Mip. A thought began to form in his mind. 

The agent, though, had grown even more truculent during their time apart. "Company rules don't allow it, sir," he said firmly. "Passengers have to use the passenger trains. Freight trains are for freight. Specials," he added with a smile, "aren't available today. Too many cars in for repairs, I'm told." 

He had a momentary vision of how tasty the agent would look if his neck were strung tight with his own telegraph wire. Before he could decide whether to carry out his plan, though, the agent suddenly turned red in the face. "You rascal!" 

"Are you addressing me?" He was amused rather than offended; "rascal" was the mildest name he had been called since he became a prison guard. 

The agent paid no attention to him. Instead, he dashed around the corner of the depot. Shortly thereafter, he returned to the front of the depot, holding the ear of a ragged-clothed youth. 

"What did I tell you about loitering around here?" he shouted at the lad, who was now yelping from the pain of having his ear tugged. 

"But you told me it would be all right, mister, since I was heading for a job. . . . You said if I gave you all my money . . ." The lad spoke in a breathless voice. 

"Liar!" The agent let go of the lad's ear, only in order to shake him. "Hopping our freights at the expense of the company – why, I ought to give you over to the town soldiers. They'd see that you cooled your heels in jail." 

The lad made no further protest, though his face was screwed up in anguish at the prospect of being handed over to the authorities. 

There was more than one way in which to have revenge, he reflected as he put away the pipe he had been about to light. "I can take care of that," he declared. 

"Sir?" Baffled, the agent turned toward him. 

Opening his jacket, he flashed the badge pinned inside it, too quickly for the agent to read the name on it. "I work in the life prisons. A rascal like that won't learn his lesson until he has spent a very long time indeed in a cell." 

_"No!"_ cried the lad, and with good reason, given the reputation of the life prisons. 

"Well," said the agent, clearly torn between satisfaction and justice, "he's not quite old enough for a life prison—" 

"He's of journeyman age." This was a guess, but the lad made no protest. "That's plenty old enough. Come here." He grabbed the lad's arm, and the agent released him. "Thank you for turning over this prisoner to me, sir. We know how to deal with such young men in the life prisons." He propelled the lad off the platform before the agent should have time to think up new protests. 

With any luck, the agent would spend the rest of his life filled with nightmares about having handed over a young man to the unremitting cruelties of the life prisons. 

"Please, mister." The lad was breathless, but he wasn't crying, which showed remarkable will-power on his part. "Please, I weren't going to do no harm—" 

"Quiet." He needed to get both of them out of sight, before the agent should begin to wonder how he planned to transport his prisoner to a life prison. 

"Mister, I won't do it again! I promise! Please let me go—" 

"I said, Quiet." He dug his fingers into the lad's arm and received a quite satisfactory grunt of pain. Then the lad was quiet, compliant. Which was a satisfaction in itself, but was rather too tempting. Taking the chance, he stopped on the bridge over the creek and released the lad. "Fine. Here we are. Go on your way." 

As he had hoped, the lad did not immediately flee; instead, the boy stared, bewildered. "Why are you letting me go, mister?" 

He could have said, "Because you're a dirty little emigrant from the Dozen Landsteads, too cowed by your childhood training to disobey authorities, even when they're abusing you." That would have been half the truth. But only half. 

"You're free to go," he emphasized to both the lad and himself. "I can't hold you. I don't possess the power to arrest men, and even if I did, no one is sentenced to life imprisonment for hopping freight trains. Though we'll just leave the agent wondering about that, shall we?" He allowed himself to offer one of his dark smiles. 

After a moment, the lad gave the hint of a smile himself. "Thank you, mister. I'm ever so much obliged to you. If there's anything I can do for you . . ." 

They were still standing on the bridge spanning the creek. From the far side of the creek came the faint whistle of a freight train headed west. 

"Well," he replied, "now that you mention it . . ."  
 


	3. Chapter Two

Thomas stood on the porch of the holding prison, breathing in the sharp crispness of autumn leaves and the ash-and-meat scent of a nearby smokehouse and the pungent smell of sheep grazing on the hillside opposite. He was thinking how much he would have liked to have turned time backwards.

All around him were mountains: mountains to the west and southwest, fading blue into the distance; mountains to the east, separating western Mip from the softer central districts; and the mountain on which he stood, quiet with the slowing rhythms of late autumn. 

From where he stood, he could not see Compassion Prison, hidden by the ridge opposite him and by the screen of undeveloped forest. He could almost imagine that he was a boy again, playing in the fields, never knowing what took place in the prison where his father worked. 

That had all ended on the day he turned twelve, and his father announced that, as the new Keeper, he was entitled to house his family within Compassion Prison. 

He stepped away from the holding prison, which was built in the western style, with a broad porch running the full length of the building's front. The building itself was ordinarily used as the town's general merchandise store and post office. There had been some grumbling among the townsfolk when the store was confiscated for temporary government use; the townsfolk complained that Compassion's Keeper should have used his own house, standing empty all these years. Thomas had been secretly glad that his childhood home would not be tainted by the activities of Compassion's guards and prisoners. 

He passed the store's outhouse, from which Pugh was just emerging. They ignored each other. Leaving the yard of the holding prison, Thomas turned toward the setting sun and walked down the turnpike, its finely ground stone pavement packed hard. He passed small shacks, buildings with broken windows and peeling paint . . . Ammippian Springs, being planted upon rocky mountain ground that made farming difficult, had long struggled for survival. There had been a time when everyone had hoped that the National Turnpike which ran through the town would change matters, since the turnpike carried hundreds of travellers journeying west, all the way from the Dozen Landsteads to the middle of the continent. 

But then the railroads had been built throughout Mip and its neighboring nations, and traffic on the turnpike had diminished. The owners of the turnpike, seeing their profits dip, stopped keeping up the road. Now the turnpike was crumbling in places, like the town surrounding it. 

He passed another road, leading south to Compassion Prison; again, he did not pause. Just ahead of him on the right was a graciously built house, taking up the position of pride on a great lawn that swept up onto the mountainside behind it. A nearby barn, looking somewhat frail, was the only hint that this property had once been a working farm. 

Thomas paused on the house's porch. His father's family, he well knew, had once owned most of Ammippian Springs. But like many Yclau aristocrats, his grandfather had been hard hit by the depression of 355, in the year when Mip received its freedom from Yclau. Some Mippite aristocrats had managed to toddle along in the years since then, supported by the stubborn desire of their neighbors to continue calling them by aristocratic titles that the Magisterial Republic of Mip no longer recognized. But Thomas's grandfather had been much disliked by his tenants; when rising prices for manufactured goods forced him to sell most of his land to the tenants who farmed the land, his former tenants promptly dropped use of his anachronistic title and ignored him. 

Thomas had not known this as a child; he had assumed that the reason none of the other children in town would play with him was because his father was a guard at one of Mip's life prisons. That was reason enough, he would eventually realize. 

He stared across the road at the autumn-brown fields, stripped of the last of their crops for the season. He had made his own entertainment as a child, playing by himself amidst haystacks or hunting for deer in the mountains, once Starke had taught him how to shoot. But in the same year that he learned how to shoot, he had conceived the ambition of becoming a prison guard himself. He had not realized then that he was slamming the door shut to all future hope of daily contact with the townsfolk. 

And if not with the townsfolk, then with whom? The other guards either despised him or humored him. His father was displeased with Thomas's radical notions, while Thomas's mother and sisters were puzzled as to why he failed to follow the lead of his father. There was his grandmother . . . But she had died when he was eleven, the last of her line to survive. Her absence had left a small grave in his heart. 

There remained the prisoners. Thomas had always possessed his father's example to dissuade him from taking that path. 

He stepped off the porch of his family home, reminding himself that he was neglecting his duty. Slowly, reluctantly, he made his way back to the holding prison. 

In the brief time he had been absent, he would not have been surprised to see that the new prisoner had taken control of the prison cell, stripping the "men" among the prisoners of their status of leadership. But when Thomas arrived in the attic, he found that someone had managed to rip off the top half of the new prisoner's uniform. The new prisoner was standing at the far end of the cell, sharing the space with cobwebs, as sweat glistened on his dark chest. His palms were laid flat upon a couple of the cell bars he stood against, as though he were a hunted animal seeking escape. 

Indeed, it appeared that the only reason matters had not gone further than this was that the cell's men had paused to argue. 

"Look, it doesn't matter which of us goes first," said Valdis in an irritated voice. "We'll all be taking him in the end. None of us is claiming him, is he?" 

"Him?" Shaking his head, Horace snorted. "I'm not even sure I want to fuck his filthy body." 

Walker said something in a low voice that caused Delgado to nod vigorously. "He's right. Fuck him, then rid this cell of him." He drew his finger across his neck, and the new prisoner stiffened. Whether or not he understood exactly what was being said, it was clear from his posture that he gathered the gist of the men's plans. Yet he gave no sign that he would fight in defense. 

"No killings," ordered Chase in an automatic manner, but he turned to the other night guard, Blythe, and spoke in a lower voice. "He deserves a bloody long killing. Did you hear what he did before he was caught?" 

"Mr. Chase, please don't swear on duty." Thomas did not need to be told what the new prisoner had done. The case had been notorious. He kept his eye on the prisoner, seeking some sign of what action the prisoner would take. 

Chase simply grinned at this reprimand. "Going to claim this one, Tom? You've waited long enough." 

"No one will claim him," Blythe predicted confidently. He was watching as the prisoners drew straws to determine which would conduct the initial rape. "Not in any full sense of the word." 

Thomas was inclined to agree. Even the lads – who normally showed pity for any suffering endured by their fellow lads – were casting looks of scorn at the new prisoner. "He stinks," one of them muttered. "He stinks worse than Brewster, and he doesn't have Brewster's excuse." He cast a look at Brewster, an ugly prisoner who, after three weeks in the cell, was still unclaimed by anyone except the guards . . . for whom a "claim" had nothing to do with protection. Made the toy of the guards and all the men in the prison for days on end, Brewster had withdrawn into himself; he was sitting in a ball in the corner of the prison, rocking to and fro, humming tunelessly as he stared blankly forward. 

"Let's thrust the new lad headfirst into the water-barrel," another lad suggested. "That will clean him well enough." 

The new prisoner's gaze had flicked over to the lads. He was now gripping the cell bars hard. Thomas – who bore the primary responsibility of seeing that none of the prisoners broke out to freedom – mentally measured the new prisoner's muscles, wondering whether he had strength enough to bash in the head of any guard entering the cell. It seemed likely. But it continued to seem unlikely that the new prisoner would use violence as a means of escape. He simply stood still, awaiting the outcome of the discussions, his chin held high and his eyes defiant. 

He would not end up like Brewster, Thomas guessed. No matter what restraint the new prisoner was showing now, in the long run he would not endure the trial being set upon him. He would return to his deadly ways, and then. . . In theory, prisoners were not supposed to be allowed to kill each other. By prison custom, though, the guards stood back and allowed the prisoners themselves to deal with any rogue killers. 

"He's mine," declared Valdis. "The rest of you will have to wait a minute or two." Wearing a satisfied smile, he stepped forward. 

"Wait." 

The new prisoner's gaze flicked away from Valdis. Everyone else had turned to stare, including the night guards. "Tom," Chase said, finding his tongue. "It's prison custom. We don't interfere with a claim." 

"That isn't a claim." Thomas kept his eyes on the new prisoner, who was meeting them square. 

"Don't be difficult, Tom." Chase sighed. "You know your father's orders: we don't enter the cell any more, except to make our own claims. Come on." He placed an avuncular hand on Thomas's shoulder. "If it makes you squeamish to watch, you can wait downstairs." 

"Yes," said Thomas, and saw a telling flicker in the prisoner's eyes. "Yes, I'm going downstairs. Deliver the prisoner to my room." 

Chase stared. "Tom . . ." 

"I claim him." Thomas turned away. "Bring me the Ammippian." 

o—o—o

"Not yet!" whispered Dick. "Wait for the brakey!" 

Lying stomach-down next to the lad, both of them screened by the shrubbery overlooking the tracks near the creek – there was a slaughterhouse behind them, which was far too appropriate – he turned his attention to the brakeman, who was inspecting a coupling between the final freight car and his caboose. Evidently satisfied, the brakeman swung himself up into the caboose and disappeared inside. 

"Now!" whispered Dick, and the two of them scrambled down the bank toward the railroad junction, where the train had paused in its journey west. They began their frantic search for an empty boxcar. 

Checking whether a boxcar was empty required him to leap up onto the still-step, cling to the grab irons along the side of the car, lean over, unlatch the door, shove it open . . . and then repeat the procedure when he discovered the car was filled with freight. By the fifth boxcar, he was sweating and had a good deal more respect than he had held previously for tramps' survival skills. 

"Mister! Here!" 

Hopping down to the ground, he turned his head. Dick had managed to make his way halfway down the line of freight cars in the time it had taken his elder to inspect just five cars. The lad was standing in the doorway of a boxcar, waving. 

And the train had started to move. 

Cursing, he began to ran, then ran faster as the locomotive, puffing out grey waves of smoke, churned its wheels faster. He managed to catch hold of the grab irons next to the boxcar door and haul himself up, but for a moment it appeared that the rising speed of the train would cause him to lose his grip. 

Then Dick reached across, grabbed his free hand, and wrenched him into the car. They both fell to the ground, Dick underneath him. 

The thought immediately crossed his mind that no magistrate in the republic was likely to trust the word of a ragged young tramp that a respectable, mid-class man such as himself had committed an assault. He pushed the thought away. Instead, he rolled over onto the floor – which smelled of rat droppings – and lay panting. 

Dick, whose smile had grown slightly more noticeable, turned onto his side, resting his head on his upraised forearm. "You look filthy!" he shouted over the rattle of the train. 

"So do you," he managed to gasp out. He was reflecting that, for all his Landstead ancestry, the lad seemed to have mastered the republican manners of Mip. The Queendom of Yclau, from which the Magisterial Republic of Mip had sprung, liked to boast that its new egalitarian movement was the most advanced in the world, but only in Mip had the elite and the commoners received the same system of justice since the republic's founding, thirty-seven years before . . . at least in theory. With that equality had come a tendency of commoners to treat their betters as though the elite truly were the commoners' equals, not just in the magistrates' court, but everywhere. 

He found himself scanning the prone lad with his eye. The youth appeared to be somewhere in the scant year between the beginning of journeymanship and adulthood, and he had the fair looks of adolescence beneath his torn, dirty shirt and overalls. 

Not that it mattered. It was said in Mercy Prison that he would fuck anything he could trap. "You mean 'rape anything,'" he had always corrected, for the amusement of seeing the speakers writhe. His fellow guards were never willing to admit that what they did to the prisoners was rape, however immune from legal prosecution they might be. 

He needed to move his mind away from this subject. Pushing himself to his feet, he looked down and saw that Dick was right: he was indeed covered now with the solid evidence of the rats' previous occupation of this car. With a sigh, he took out a handkerchief. 

In the next moment, Dick was kneeling at his feet, brushing away the filth with his bare hands. 

"You don't need to do that," he commented, too much enjoying the view to offer any real protest. 

"I don't mind," the lad rejoined. "Done it to myself often enough. Where are you headed in such a hurry, mister?" 

He hesitated before lying. "The end of the line." 

Dick leaned down to wipe his boots. "You transferring to the B&V, then?" 

"I've often thought of visiting Vovim," he hedged. The Balmer & Vovim Railroad, just over the border in the Kingdom of Vovim, ran all the way from Balmer in the Dozen Landsteads to southern Vovim. He had no intention of taking that train . . . though perhaps he should say that he had no intention yet. A great deal depended on what he would learn at his destination. 

"Thought at first you might be going to Balmer." The lad straightened up. 

He managed to bat away Dick's hands and step back, the moment before the lad was about to brush off the cloth of his trousers, at crotch level. "No. Is that where you were headed before? East to the Dozen Landsteads?" 

Dick shook his head as he rose to his feet. He stood with ease on the swaying floor of the boxcar, his voice pitched just loud enough to be heard over the persistent clankety-clank of the train and the occasional whistle from the locomotive. The northern-facing doorway of the boxcar was propped open with a railway spike that the lad had thoughtfully grabbed along the way; the doorway revealed that they were passing farmland. The train whooshed by a station without stopping: Pinesburg. From the slant of the floor and the energetic puff of the locomotive, it was clear that the train was beginning to climb up one of the mountains that could be seen from Williamsport. 

"It's no good there," Dick declared. "Not for servants. It's better here. My parents said." 

"You ran away from them?" He thought of taking out his pipe, and then dismissed the idea. Trying to light a pipe in a swaying freight car was beyond his abilities. Instead, he stepped back to brace himself against the wall opposite the doorway. 

Something moved in the lad's eyes then. "No, mister. My mama and daddy are dead. They was killed, crossing the border." 

"Mippite border guards?" 

"Landstead guards. Our mister and mistress didn't give us permission to leave our landstead, you see." 

"I begin to see why your parents tried to emigrate." Another station name flashed by: Clear Spring. The train began to slow, chugging harder. "How old were you?" 

The lad straightened his shoulders. "Four tri-years. I mean, twelve years old. Old enough. I wandered around till I found the meeting place of some tramps. One of them taught me their ways, for a couple of years before he fell off a bumper while we was beating our way east. Knocked his head in." 

He thought of asking what the lad's payment for that education had been – he knew enough about Mip's underworld to have heard of such things – but decided against the question. "So is that your ambition in life? To be a tramp?" 

Dick shrugged. "I've taken work, sometimes. Some of the other tramps laugh at me, but I don't like begging. I'd rather earn my own way. Can't find much work, though." 

In those ragged clothes, certainly not. He looked the lad over again, assessing him, this time in a professional manner, as he would if the lad turned up as a prisoner. "Can you read?" he asked. Landstead servants usually couldn't. 

"Oh, yes, mister!" The lad was clearly proud of this accomplishment, for he pulled out a memorandum book from a pocket of his overalls. "I taught myself. See?" 

He gestured with his hand. With visible reluctance, the lad handed over the book. The lad began to speak, then fell silent as the unmistakable sound of footsteps tapped their way across the roof of the boxcar: the brakeman, preparing to brake each car when the train reached the summit of the mountain and began to go downhill. The train slowed yet further as the locomotive huffed its way to the top. 

Opening the book, he expected to see half-literate scribbles. Indeed, much of the terminology was mysterious to him; he guessed that, in the privacy of his journal, the lad felt free to use the tramps' lingo that he wouldn't use around a stranger such as himself. 

But he should have guessed what he'd find, from the fact that the lad had stripped himself of his Landstead accent and most of his servant grammar. Despite the underworld catch-phrases, the journal entries were painstakingly meticulous, both in language and in character. They were well-written, detailed observations of the men and boys whom Dick had met on his travels. The lad captured their virtues, their foibles . . . and the darkness that some of them strove to hide. 

He did not look up from the book, but he suddenly felt naked. He wondered why Dick, so keen an observer, wasn't more frightened of him. "Have you ever shown this to any of your employers?" 

"No, sir. Not to anyone. I figured they'd take it away from me." 

He raised his eyes. The lad was keeping a good distance, but Dick's tense stance was that of a mother who has entrusted her much-beloved child to the arms of someone else. He said, "But you trust me?" 

He never received the answer. At that moment, as the train began to make its way swiftly down the mountain, the brakeman swung into the car and pointed his revolver at Dick.  
 


	4. Chapter Three

Fingering his amulet, Thomas thought about his father's advice.

He leaned back in his chair behind the desk. Upon settling into the holding prison, he had positioned his desk so that it was facing the door to his room, in order to give an official atmosphere to the setting. The position of the desk could not disguise the fact that his room was actually a bedroom. Even with the prison's guard reduced to a skeleton crew, there were too few rooms in the building to allow Thomas both an office and a bedroom. "That could be an advantage," Pugh had told Thomas in his coarse manner. 

_Gamble high,_ his father had said when he first taught Thomas how to play dice, at age five. _Sometimes you'll lose everything. But if you're skilled enough, you'll win it all back._

"Oh, Merrick," Thomas murmured, "am I gambling too high this time?" 

There were steps at the door. No time in which to undo his collar again and thrust the amulet down his shirt; Thomas let the amulet fall loose around his neck, trusting to the high desk to hide it from view. 

The door opened. Blythe escorted in the prisoner, not touching the man, which showed that the guard had a certain amount of native sense. "Shall I stay inside, or guard the door?" he asked Thomas. 

"Neither," Thomas replied. "You may return to your post, Mr. Blythe." 

Blythe looked startled; then, as Thomas had known it would, the guard's gaze shifted over to the bed. "Ah. Well. We'll be within shouting distance, if you need us." 

The prisoner was looking at the bed too, but as the door closed, his gaze snapped over to Thomas. He was unbound; Thomas had managed to convey to the night guard his firm notions about keeping prisoners unbound except during punishment. The night guards had grudgingly accepted his eccentricity, since his skill with a whip was well known. 

Unbound, Ahiga had chosen to cross his arms. That position made his considerable muscles bulge. He looked furious, as well he might. 

Thomas tried not to think about what he knew of this prisoner's past history. "You are Ahiga," he said. 

The prisoner made no reply. He was still bare-chested. He was youthful in appearance, but with a hard set to his mouth, and harder eyes. His long hair was gathered in a knot behind his neck, in the fashion of Ammippian warriors. 

Thomas flicked the briefest of glances at the prisoner's records. The prisoner had requested and used an interpreter at his trial. Most Ammippians refused to learn the languages of their conquerors. Thomas weighed that fact against what he had witnessed in the cell. 

He tried again. "I generally address prisoners by title and last name. But Ammippians do not adopt a career name upon adulthood, and they have no family names, because they believe it shows dishonor to their ancestors to reuse names and titles. So I will address you in the Ammippian fashion, simply as Ahiga." 

Still no response. Scorn glazed the eyes of the prisoner. 

There was an easy way by which to tear away the prisoner's complacence. But it was not yet time to roll double sixes, so instead Thomas said, "I have claimed you. Do you know what that means?" 

A deepening of the hatred in the prisoner's look was the man's only response. 

Thomas abruptly decided that he despised the desk. He had not broken through Merrick's considerable barriers by sitting behind a desk and reciting officialese. He stood up and walked forward, saying, "I want you to understand that I am not—" 

Ahiga attacked. 

Thomas had a split second in which to decide what to do. That was to say, he had ample time in which to decide what to do. The prisoner was too close for Thomas to use his whip. At the rate at which the prisoner was attacking, any use of the dagger would have deadly consequences for the prisoner. 

Against that, there was knowledge of the prisoner's death toll. 

_Gamble high,_ Thomas's father had advised, and Thomas did so. He put out his hand, like a soldier directing traffic. 

Ahiga paid no attention to this mild defense. He thrust Thomas against the wall and grabbed his amulet, shaking it in his face. "Thief!" he shouted. 

There was only one response Thomas could make to this that the Ammippian would understand. He threw his dice. 

"Youngest of the young," he said in the Ammippian tongue. "You dare to touch the sacred body of your elder?" 

o—o—o

He had a split second in which to assess the chances of survival for himself and for Dick. 

The chances weren't good for the lad. Dick had been standing next to the boxcar door; the brakeman, swinging himself in with lightning quickness, had managed to place himself _behind_ the lad. The brakeman's revolver was now pressed against Dick's back. 

Which meant that the brakeman's back was to the other occupant of the train, standing half-hidden in the shadows. If this had been Mercy Prison, and the brakeman had been his prisoner holding a knife – or even his father holding a knife – the man would have been easy enough to disarm. 

But even though he was a guard, he had never touched a gun; firearms were rare in Mip. He had heard enough about them to be reluctant to attack a man wielding one. Instead, he remained silent, watching the drama take place. 

"Off," said the brakeman. 

"We're going too fast!" protested the lad – who, to his credit, had said nothing about the second occupant of this car. Perhaps he was simply hoping to be rescued. 

"You should have thought of that before you stole a ride on the company's property. If you haven't jumped in nine seconds, I'll shoot you. Nine, eight, seven . . ." 

Dick twisted his head round to give a despairing look at the brakeman. Beyond him, the open boxcar door revealed that the train was presently making its way along a trestle over a steep ravine. If Dick jumped now, he would certainly end up dead at the bottom of the gorge. It wasn't clear whether the brakeman cared. 

It was time, he decided, that he tested whether the brakeman cared. Slipping the memorandum book into his pocket, he took out his pipe, tobacco, and matches. 

The sound of a match striking the box caused the guard to swing his head around. "What in Hell's name . . . ?" 

Dick – who should have taken this opportunity to wrench the revolver out of the brakeman's hand – stared too. His face was drained of all blood. 

He lit his pipe in a leisurely fashion, long enough that the train made its way off the trestle. Then he said, "Push him." 

"Beg pardon?" The brakeman, understandably, was disconcerted by this unsolicited advice. 

"Push him. I needed to get to my destination in a hurry, so it amused me to hire him to show me how to hop freights. But he has bored me with his endless chit-chat. So push him off the train. He's a penniless orphan; if he breaks his neck, no magistrate will bring a murder charge against you." 

He had always possessed a talent for putting into plain Mippite the deeds that other guards tried to hide from their consciences through mealy-mouthed euphemisms. Now, as so many times before, he watched the other man's face change as the brakeman fully grasped what he had been about to do. 

The lad – hearing only the words, not seeing the effect of those words – had turned his white face toward the apparent traitor. He said nothing, but his eyes spoke of Hell's domain. 

The brakeman cleared his throat as he clicked the change lever to the safe position on his revolver. "We're about to arrive at Big Pool. I might as well let you both off there." 

The brakeman was as good as his word. The train slowed as they approached the freight station, a small wooden building with broad eaves that protected the barrels and crates waiting to be loaded. Dick promptly jumped off, landing on his knees. He scrambled off. 

Following in a more leisurely fashion, he handed the brakeman the note he had scribbled in the interval, using a bit of paper torn from the memorandum book. "What's this?" asked the brakeman, staring at the name and address. 

"A good legal counsel. You'll need him if you continue to follow your present course of action against illicit riders." 

It was as bold a lie as he had ever told. It was quite true, what he had said before, that no magistrate was likely to care about the death of a tramp who had been found hopping a train. But from the expression on the brakeman's face, it was clear that the brakeman didn't intend to test the matter further. 

Swinging down from the train – the wrong side of the train, away from the platform – he paused a moment. Partly this was to catch his breath. The extremities of his body were still throbbing from what he had witnessed. _All_ his extremities. Tapping his pipe clean of the tobacco, he waited a minute for the hardness to soften; then he took an assessing look at the landscape. The broad body of water in front of him – the "Big Pool" from which the station took its name – had a spillway across it. He thought a moment, then followed the train track in the direction of Big Pool. 

He caught up with Dick on the canal towpath; the lad had stopped to nurse his scraped knees. Dick scrambled to his feet as soon as he saw the intruder. "Don't come near me!" he cried. An open penknife appeared in his hand, from out of nowhere. 

He took a long look at the knife, wondering where Dick had hidden it – wondering too why Dick hadn't used it back in the train, when the man who had hired him had ended up lying on top of him. 

After a while, Dick said in a shaking voice, "Go away." 

"Here." He tossed Dick the memorandum book. "You're an intelligent lad, to have survived this long on your own. All you need to make it through life is one skill you've missed: the art of creative falsehood." 

Dick – who had caught the memorandum book in his left hand without letting go of the knife in his right – stared at the book, and at the piece of paper sticking out from within its pages. 

Perhaps he thought it was a bribe. 

But no, evidently the lad's ability to assess the motives of men and women was as keen as ever. Dick raised his eyes, swallowed, and said, "I don't want to lie." 

He shrugged. "Then learn to keep your mouth shut. You told me more than you should have; I could have used it against you, if I'd chosen. Keep your mouth shut and your ears and eyes open. You'll go further that way." 

Dick slowly put away the knife and pulled the piece of paper out from the pages. It was a twenty-dollar bill, enough to keep the lad fed and sheltered for a month. Dick said softly, "I'm sorry." 

"Don't be. I've fooled more experienced men than you." He jerked his head eastward, in the direction of the opposite end of Big Pool. "Come on." 

Dick fell into pace beside him, stuffing the book and the bill into his pocket. "Where are we going, mister?" 

"You ought to have figured that out by now." He amused himself by showing the lad his dark smile. "Compassion Life Prison."   
 


	5. Chapter Four

Alone in his bedroom, Thomas leaned back against the wall, once more fingering his amulet.

It had been given to him by his grandmother, who must have made a thousand baskets or more to afford the cost of its creation. It held the symbols of the three faiths that Thomas followed. Now Thomas carefully traced the lines of the image that had caught Ahiga's eye: the symbol of one of the Ammippian tribes. 

There was more than one tribe. That was what most Mippites failed to grasp: that "Ammippian" was simply the name that the invaders from the Old World had given to all of the natives they encountered in what would become the midcoast nations. Those native tribes had fought amongst themselves until they had realized who their true enemy was and had united under one banner of war against the invaders. Their fortunes were joined thereafter in their suffering. 

All of the Ammippians shared a belief in the importance of honoring the ways of one's ancestors, but Thomas's grandmother had come from one of the few tribes which was willing to show that belief in a visible symbol of art. There on the amulet was her tribe's image of the passing on of knowledge from one generation to another: a teacher lying on the ground with his lad. 

The teacher, stomach-down, was tracing symbols in the dirt – no doubt he was teaching his lad the sacred alphabet. The lad, his head close to the teacher's, was pointing, in the midst of asking his elder a question. Both the man and the lad were absorbed in the lesson. Later in the evening, Thomas knew from his grandmother's tales, the teacher and lad would share one blanket, the teacher keeping his lad warm in the chill forest where the two of them hunted together during the lad's period of training. 

Thomas carefully placed the amulet's chain around his neck again. As a small boy, he had assumed that his father took care of lads in the Ammippian manner. What else could his father's casual references to "taking lads" mean? His mother had had similar tales to tell, from her homeland of Vovim, of lads being cared for by men, though she had delicately hinted that the "caring" there was more than the chaste relationship between an Ammippian teacher and his lad. 

In both cultures, the man and his lad were bound by affection, by the man's willingness to teach, and by the lad's willingness to obey. Thomas had been pleased to think that his father was continuing this noble tradition. 

He went over to stand by the untouched teacup, staring down at it. The tradition he had learned about was not entirely a lie, he knew. It was practiced, to varying degrees, by some of the prisoners who took weaker prisoners under their protection. The prisoners even used the word "lad" to refer to these weaker members of the prison, although the "lads" were all adults. A sixty-year-old, Thomas had come to realize, might have as much need to learn as a sixteen-year-old. 

So the tradition of men and lads was practiced at Compassion Prison, occasionally, and always at the stronger prisoner's whim. There was enough of that tradition at Compassion that it might be nurtured, if encouraged. 

But not among the guards. To them, a "lad" was fit for only one thing: to be taken unwilling, as a punishment for the crimes that the prisoner had committed before his arrest. 

Thomas picked up the cup of tea and sipped from it. It had gone cold. Thomas tried to think. 

What could he say to his father? That he had beaten a dangerous prisoner as punishment for that prisoner's assault on him, and then had left the room in order to fetch tea for the prisoner? That he had left the prisoner alone and unguarded? 

His father would strip him of his title as Assistant Keeper. Most likely he would sack Thomas. To let any prisoner escape was bad enough, but a prisoner who had done what Ahiga had done . . . 

And now Ahiga was loose again, ready to bring more destruction upon the nation. It was not even as though this was the first time Thomas had made this mistake. 

He sighed and set the teacup back on his desk, staring at the open doorway leading to the hallway. He ought to alert the Mippite soldiers, he supposed; they were charged with hunting down escaped prisoners. It would mean sending one of the prison guards on a long ride to Hagerstown, since neither this town nor Compassion Prison possessed a telegraph line. He imagined himself saying to Pugh, "I just lost a prisoner. Will you loan me one of your men?" 

Perhaps he could wake Starke and ask him to send the message. But somehow, the thought of Starke's condescending pity was worst at all. 

He rubbed his eyes. When he opened them again, the bedroom door was closed, and Ahiga was standing before him. 

o—o—o

He left Dick in the custody of one of Compassion's prison guards, Starke. Dick twisted around, giving him a look half-pleading, half-hopeful, which he ignored. Starke pulled the lad into the prison, and the riot doors closed behind them, with a boom. 

He was left contemplating the dark entryway, this being as far as the wary guards would allow him to go. If he had revealed his true identity, no doubt he would have been escorted in to see Compassion's Keeper; he had acquired a reputation for treachery that Keepers seemed to find irresistible. But he was at Compassion, as he had carefully told the entry guards, because he was a tradesman, trying to finish up a bit of business. As a result, he now found himself to be the focussed attention of two rifle barrels, aimed at his heart. He ignored them, as well as the entry guards who were aiming the rifles at him. 

The riot doors opened again, and his heartbeat sped up. 

He recognized Tom at once, although the guards' cap he was wearing shadowed his features. There was something unmistakable about Tom's slow, leisurely walk, which could turn – as Tom had shown during his time in Mercy Prison – into the quick lash of a striking snake, without any warning. Now Tom was walking in the sauntering manner that, along with his seemingly naive expression, had initially fooled every guard at Mercy as to Tom's nature. 

He had never been fooled. Not since the first day, when Tom had looked upon him as he was mauling a prisoner. He still could not say why that look had made a difference, when all the sharp words, threats, and beatings he had experienced in his lifetime had never swerved him from his destructive goals. 

Perhaps it was merely that he had sensed kinship with Tom. 

Now, as Tom's face came into view, his heartbeat sped up still more. Tom's face was as blank and hard as the walls of Compassion Prison. There was no sign of recognition as Tom glanced briefly, dismissively at the waiting visitor. 

He had not expected that there would be. He had never known anyone as skilled as Tom at deceiving without actually telling lies. 

One of the entry guards had come down from his balcony perch in order to intercept Tom. The guard said, without preliminary, "Visitor for you." 

"Mr. Starke told me. I'll be away until the night shift begins; inform the Keeper if he asks." Tom's voice was cool. 

The entry guard gave a half-shrug; he had already started to turn away. Tom's lips thinned, but the business before him was evidently too important to allow for any delays. He gestured to the other entry guard, who pulled down the lever that opened the gate to the outside. 

Compassion Prison stood atop a broad foothill, the inner part of the building having previously served as both a prison and a fort during the Thousand Years' War. Since shortly before Mip's emancipation, there had been no need for a fort, for Mip's neighboring nations, Vovim and Yclau, had pledged to stop making the territory of Mip the center of their quarrels. Surprisingly – he was always surprised when human nature took a turn for good – both countries had kept their promise and left Mip in peace. No doubt that had something to do with the fact that the Magisterial Republic of Mip had become a useful place of exchange for trade and industry. 

Now he could see no signs that this hillside had once served as a bloody battlefield. A generous-sized lawn draped down toward the bottom of the hill, dotted by the occasional tree and – incongruously – a pumpkin patch. A farmer and his sons were hefting the last of the season's pumpkins onto a cart; the farmer tipped his hat at Tom as he passed, and Tom returned the greeting by tipping his own cap. Tom had not yet spoken to his visitor. 

He reminded himself of Tom's abilities at deception. Still, he felt his stomach tighten. His visit brought danger, not only to himself, but to Tom as well. Was Tom angered by his unexpected and unsolicited arrival? What lay between them, he well knew, was a bond as delicate as gossamer, given their very different characters and backgrounds. 

They reached the railroad, just in time to watch the final cars of a freight-train – perhaps the same train – travel east. Waving away the cloud of soot that followed the locomotive, he was amused to see that two tramps were riding the rods of one of the cars. Not the means of travel he would have chosen – rods were beneath the cars, mere inches from the track – but he had acquired a certain interest now in tramps, so much despised by the general public. 

Which, upon reflection, was hardly surprising. 

He and Tom passed over the tracks and came to a canal lock. Tom pushed forward a swinging bridge, but once the two of them were over it, Tom did not bother to push the bridge back, out of the way of canal-boats. In matter of fact, there were no canal-boats. To the east was the narrow canal, to the west was the lake of Big Pool, and in neither direction could any boat be seen. 

Tom, seeing his visitor's interest, commented, "This stretch of the canal still hasn't been repaired since the floods of 384." 

"Will it be?" he asked. At least Tom was now talking to him, albeit in the sort of distant fashion that he might adopt toward a lowly tradesman. 

"It's hard to say. The Western Mippite Railroad bought the canal after the flood." 

And the railroad company might well be pleased to see the canal founder, since the canal was its rival for carrying freight. He gazed at Tom, once again struck by how a seemingly innocent and pure guard had so strong an understanding of evil. 

Tom still had not looked at him directly, for more than brief second. "This way," he said in a brusque manner and stepped onto the canal towpath. 

Williamsport was only twelve miles away by rail, but since Big Pool was higher in elevation, autumn had reached its dying dregs here, in the final days leading up to Hell's Fast. Yellowing osage-orange leaves rattled like the throats of dying men; the trees' hedge-apples lay smashed and moldering on the ground, leaving the towpath looking much like the stinking, cluttered house his mother had once purported to housekeep. 

Death lay all around. He idly picked up a handful of brittle leaves and began tearing them apart, one by one. 

They reached a point on the towpath that was beyond sight of the railroad or the prison. Tom abruptly stopped, looking out toward the water. He did not speak. His silence lengthened. There was only the caw of the occasional crow, and the sigh of the wind, light in the trees. Then there was nothing at all except silence. 

The silence began to seep into his heart, stilling the turmoil there. The water lapped near his feet, chuckling softly to itself. Following Tom's gaze, he saw, on the thin strip of grassy ground between the towpath and Big Pool, a spark of green: a pine sapling, pushing its way through the dead leaves in anticipation of spring. 

He murmured, "You could find hope in Hell's domain." 

When he looked up, he saw that Tom was smiling. Tom knew his own skills in transforming men, although there had been a time, back during their first acquaintance, when it had appeared that Tom would be afraid to use his skills. 

But then Tom had met Merrick, and everything had changed. 

Now Tom put forward his arm. "It's very good to see you again." 

He noted that, even with the two of them apparently alone, Tom was careful not to speak his name. He took Tom's arm, and the two of them shook forearms. Tom's grip was much firmer than his appearance would have suggested. 

There was a small silence, such as invariably occurs at any meeting between two men who have not seen each other for a long time. He finally broke it by saying, "Tom . . . why did that guard of yours obey you in such a lackadaisical manner?" 

The edge of Tom's mouth turned up in a wry manner. His expressions were the same as in the past, though the lines on his face were etched more deeply. It seemed likely that the lines weren't there due to age; Tom was still only twenty-eight years old. "It was worse eight years ago," Tom replied. 

"When you first became Assistant Keeper?" 

Tom nodded. "At least they'll obey me these days, albeit in a reluctant, off-hand fashion. When I first became Assistant Keeper . . . I was far too young for the post. And I made too many mistakes in my first year. One time, I decided I could gain the other guards' respect by joining into their customs, as far as my conscience would permit me." 

He started to ask about the lad, then changed his mind. Tom had only mentioned the lad once, eight years before. At that time, he had ridiculed Tom. Tom had never spoken to him of the lad again. In his own way, Tom was as harsh a disciplinarian as his father. 

Nor did Tom indicate now what the source of the past trouble was. He merely added, "My plan backfired, of course." 

It was a vivid image: a fire approaching and eating another fire. "They felt contempt for you?" 

"And expressed it. I didn't agree with their assessment of the situation, but after that I made no further attempts to curry favor with them. I was a fool for trying to pretend I shared their moral beliefs." He dismissed the matter with a wave of the hand. "Enough about me. How was your trip here?" 

It was typical of Tom, he thought, that the man should so swiftly turn a discussion of his deep troubles to a minute examination of his visitor's journey. It was even more typical of Tom that he had been so frank about his failures. 

Mercy Prison was filled with men who lied. The prisoners were the least of it. Most of the guards were rapists and torturers – even the Boundaries-bound guards usually went through a period of thrilling sadism before they belatedly came to the conclusion that there were less destructive ways to keep control of the prisoners. 

He never lied. That was one of the things that made him so unpopular among the other guards. He called himself for what he was: a rapist, a torturer, a man who long ago would have forfeited his right to rebirth, if such a thing existed. The other guards didn't like that. They wanted to disguise their horrendous deeds under a kindly guise of impotent words: "Mistakes." "Errors." Or even "appropriate discipline." 

All but Tom. He was the purest guard working in the life prisons, yet he never tried to excuse himself when he took a misstep. Nor had he ever tried to disguise that he could easily have been a rapist or a torturer himself. Through implicit statements, he was willing to claim kinship with the most evil man ever to work in the life prisons. 

He turned his attention back to Tom's words; the discussion had turned from freight-hopping to more important matters. 

"—very clever, suing Mercy's Keeper rather than attacking the magisterial seats openly for their policies in running the life prisons," Tom was saying. "Was that your idea?" 

He shook his head. "Merrick's." 

"Ah." Not surprisingly, Tom's gaze wandered away. He was silent a moment, looking out on the water that reflected the various shades of brown leaves. Finally he said, "And your odds of succeeding in the suit?" 

"Not good. But we're hoping that we can at least scare the other Keepers into rethinking their methods of keeping order." 

Tom gave a low chuckle, deep in his throat. "You've succeeded in that. My father has been developing new ways to disguise his nefarious deeds to the world." 

He swore aloud – he wasn't the type to swear under his breath – and then cut off his recital as he recalled that Tom disliked blasphemous oaths. Instead he asked, "Has your father spoken again about retiring?" 

Tom's wry smile returned. "He has said that he will retire once the situation is more stable in the life prisons. That is to say, when he thinks that the Boundaries of Behavior are doomed at Mercy." 

He shouted his blasphemies to the sky this time. Tom's hand tightening on his arm cut him off. Pulling himself free, he snatched a handful of leaves from the tree next to him and began to tear them into pieces, saying, "Your father ought to recognize that, no matter what your ethical differences with him, you're a better guard than he will ever be." 

"You forget; he was the one who urged me to train to replace him one day." Tom was ever one to give due credit, even to his enemies. "My rise to power will take time. You and I both knew that from the beginning. But with me working here, and with you and Merrick and the others working at Mercy Prison, we'll find a way to ensure that the Boundaries of Behavior are kept in all the life prisons, and that guards who don't keep the Boundaries are suitably punished." 

The corpses of dead, broken, mutilated leaves drifted down from his hands. He was aware once more of the stillness of this place – the sense of peace that seemed to accompany Tom wherever he went. Trees, shrubs, birds: the entire autumn world lay hushed, awaiting its rebirth in spring. 

All but one man. One man who had figuratively been reborn once, and had used the opportunity of his rebirth to destroy once more. 

He looked up. Tom's eyes were steady upon his, waiting. He drew in breath, feeling the sharp autumn cold penetrate his lungs. 

"Tom," he said, "I've broken the Boundaries of Behavior."  
 


	6. Chapter Five

Ahiga had stripped himself of the last remnants of his prison uniform. He wore only his loincloth – the normal battle clothing of an Ammippian, Thomas knew. Ahiga still looked angry. Little wonder. What was he doing here?

When Ahiga finally spoke, it was in Ammippian. "You should not leave me without guard. I am a danger." 

"I am knowing that," Thomas replied in the same tongue. 

Ahiga smoothly switched to the Mippite language. "Then why did you so? I could have escaped." 

"I left you free," replied Thomas in Mippite, holding out the teacup, "so that you should know in what manner I am claiming you." 

Frowning, Ahiga took the cup, but he did not drink from it. He said, his voice harsh, "You are a thief." 

Thomas raised his eyebrows. 

Ahiga pointed at the amulet hanging from Thomas's neck. "You steal our images. You steal our tongue. Who is giving you knowledge of such things?" 

"My grandmother," Thomas replied, and then added her name in her native tongue. 

Ahiga looked at Thomas as though he were something unpleasant that the Ammippian had stepped on. "You are a half-breed." 

"A quarter-breed," Thomas replied calmly. "One-quarter of my blood is Ammippian. The other three-quarters . . . a mixture. I'm a Mippite. That means I'm not ashamed to be of mixed blood." 

It was the truth, though not the entire truth. Thomas, like many Mippites of his generation, gloried in his mixed heritage, but his father had adopted the older view that mixed blood was a taint upon a pure bloodline. Compassion's Keeper was always defensive about the fact that he had married a Vovimian woman, and he had done his best to keep his only son from being in contact with his own Ammippian mother. Thomas had sneaked away periodically to visit his Ammippian grandmother – the first of many acts of defiance he would show toward his father. 

In the Ammippian language, there was no greater insult than to call someone a half-breed, unless it was to name what Thomas's grandmother had done when she married Thomas's grandfather. Thomas could see that Ahiga was puzzled by the Assistant Keeper's calm acceptance of the insult that had been flung at him. 

Thomas carefully explained, "She was the last member of her tribe. She didn't want her tribe's ways to be forgotten. So she taught me her language, as well as the language that the tribes use when speaking together – the language that the Mippites refer to as Ammippian. She taught me the ways of her tribe and the ways of all the Ammippians, so that, if I should ever meet another Ammippian, we would be able to converse together, and share knowledge." 

Still frowning, Ahiga said, "You have the blood of the invaders. Your people destroyed mine." 

"Yes," said Thomas softly. "And you had your revenge for that, didn't you?" 

Ahiga abruptly turned his face away, as though he had been struck. His dark-skinned face had begun to flush. Thomas pressed him: "Why did you return here? You were free to escape and wreak further destruction." 

For a long moment, the Ammippian did not speak. Finally he said in a low voice, "I was taught wrong. I do not want to return to those who taught me wrong. And the others among my people, who might have taught me right. . . they have wiped their memories of me." His throat moved as he swallowed. 

"You have only reached your twenty-first autumn," Thomas replied. "There is still time to learn the right teaching." 

Ahiga turned his face slowly back to look at the Assistant Keeper. He bore the tattoos of manhood on his torso; he had already undergone his coming-of-age ceremony. He might justifiably have been insulted by such a suggestion. But his forehead was puckered, as though he were considering the proposal. 

Over the years, Thomas had found that honesty was the best manner in which to disarm hostile prisoners. Now he said, "I'm a year younger than you. I can't claim to hold the wisdom of an elder. But I can do one thing for you that your eldest elder couldn't do: I can protect you here. If you allow me to claim you as my lad, I will protect you against any guard or prisoner who wishes to harm you. I swear that." 

"You would do this for the sake of your grandmother's ghost?" Ahiga replied slowly. 

Thomas hesitated. But Ahiga was bound to find out, soon enough; better that he should hear it from Thomas. "And for another reason. Having a lad will give me status among the other guards. I need that status, in order to protect the other prisoners. I can't claim them all as my lads, but if my power is greater than it is now, I could influence the other guards' behavior. If you are willing—" 

"You are alone." 

Ahiga's words stopped Thomas's mouth. He stared down at his boots, uncertain how to reply. He could hear, faintly, the sound of the night guards, laughing as they shared some joke with each other. 

"How long is it being?" Ahiga persisted. 

Thomas could feel sweat upon his skin, clammy. He took a deep breath. "All my life, I think. There was a time recently, when I came to know another man at Mercy Life Prison—" 

"You took him as your lad?" The Ammippian seemed wholly absorbed in the tale. 

"Not as my lad, no. That wasn't part of his tradition. But when I was with him, I wasn't lonely, for a while. Now . . ." He forced himself to look up and meet Ahiga's gaze squarely. "I'm sorry. I should have realized that my motives for trying to help you were selfish." 

He saw that Ahiga was grinning. 

"Ha!" Ahiga shouted the word up to the ceiling, then swallowed the tea with one gulp and threw the cup at the wall, shattering it. "Ha, now I know you! I thought you wished to take me from pity, standing in your lofty station above me – but it is not that, is it, Mippite? You know me to be like you. You see me alone, and you see yourself. And the danger – you have known the danger?" Ahiga's voice was eager now. 

"Yes," said Thomas firmly, doing his best to hide his surprise at Ahiga's change of mood. "I've known the temptation to destroy, many times." 

"Then you can teach me." Reaching forward, Ahiga thumped Thomas on the back, so hard that Thomas staggered. "You wish to destroy, but have not. You are alone, but you think not of your aloneness – instead, you reach out to another who is alone. You are an elder, Mippite, though you have not known it. And I—" 

Suddenly he was on his knees in front of Thomas, and Thomas's heart was throbbing in his throat as he felt that supreme ecstasy of power which he knew his father had always known when he forced a lad to serve him in bed. 

But this was different. Thomas knew it was different, from the fierce joy in Ahiga's face. "I am your lad," the Ammippian pledged. "And you will teach me right, in the ways of your people, so that your grandmother's ghost will not sorrow. We will give this gift to her ghost, so that she may speak to the other ancestors on my behalf. I will do whatever you wish, for the sake of this learning." 

Thomas took a deep breath, feeling Ahiga's willing submission enter into his heart, healing the wound there. "In that case," he said quietly, "I wish you to ready our bed." 

o—o—o

"—no excuse for what I've been doing," he told Tom. "I know perfectly well that he has only been offering himself to me because he fears me. It's not as though the Boundaries of Behavior that you inspired Merrick to invent are hazy on this point. 'I take no one unwilling,' they say. Offering yourself up to your guard because you're afraid he will torture you is not a willing giving. I've been taking advantage of him." 

Tom did not speak for a minute. His eye was on the far end of the lake, where smoke rose from an eastbound locomotive. As the thunder of the train neared, Tom crouched down and cleared a little space around the young pine tree. 

The locomotive passed, sixty-five tons of deadly steel, swooping over the tracks with the elegance of a great blue heron swooping over the water. "Blue herons are good luck," he had been told when he was young, but this heron was dark and deadly . . . like himself. 

"Tom?" he prodded finally. "What should I do?" 

"I don't know." Tom rose to his feet. 

He stared. It was not the answer he had expected. "Tom . . ." 

Tom shook his head, still staring at the sapling. "I just don't know. I'm too far away from Mercy to know for sure what you're doing. You'll have to trust your own instinct." 

"My instinct?" He gave an incredulous laugh. "My instinct is for destruction, always. If I don't have someone to stop me—" He cut himself off abruptly. He was not prepared to say aloud what the entrance of Tom into his life had meant. 

And now Tom had failed him. Had failed to give him any guidance whatsoever on what to do. 

He tried again. "Should I leave the prison? I know that you've been counting on me to help with matters at Mercy, if you should ever gain control of Compassion, but with my instinct for destruction . . ." 

But Tom did not seem to be listening to what he was saying. The Assistant Keeper's attention was focussed on his visitor's left hand. 

He looked down at his hand. He was still clutching the last of the leaves he had picked up before. It was not yet crumpled. Looking at it, he could feel the desire rising in him: to mutilate, to tear, to crush. To utterly destroy. 

Tom's hand folded over his, pushing his hand into a fist. The leaf crumpled. Its remains fluttered to the ground, onto the space of ground that Tom had cleared around the sapling. 

He looked up, bewildered. Tom looked steadily back at him. "Saplings need soil to grow. Soil needs dead leaves. There's a place for everything offered in sacrifice throughout the cycle of death, transformation, and rebirth . . . even for your consummate skills in destruction." 

"Tom . . ." he said weakly. 

Tom turned away again, his attention caught by something moving further down the bank. "I can't tell you what to do about your prisoner. But I can remind you of what you've told me today. As I understand from what you've hinted, today you had the opportunity to molest without consequences a young, orphaned tramp. You had the opportunity to watch that same tramp be arrested and even murdered . . . again, without consequences for you." Tom's eyes followed the object moving beside the lake. "Instead, using that deadly talent of yours, you forced two men in authority to reconsider the immorality of their lives. You rescued the young man from arrest. You rescued him from death, at risk of your own life. You paid him a month's wages for an hour's work, and you did your best to set him on the road to a better life." Tom turned and gave him a crooked smile, saying softly, "He trusts you. I trust you. Perhaps, my friend, it's time you learned to trust yourself." 

On the water, the moving object coalesced into a flutter of wings, and then the great blue heron soared into the sky, climbing toward the setting sun.   
 


	7. Chapter Six

When he arrived at the cell around midnight, Thomas found only Starke on duty.

"Couldn't sleep," Starke explained, yawning into my fist. "Might as well be here as anywhere else." 

"Where is the night guard?" As he returned Ahiga to the cell, he glanced over at the other prisoners. They were still casting looks of scorn at the Ammippian, but none of them appeared inclined to come near. Nor would they be likely to trouble Ahiga again, Thomas knew, once Ahiga made clear his on-going service to the Assistant Keeper. Such harassment would go against prison custom, now that Ahiga had truly been claimed. 

Starke shrugged. "The night guards told me that, if you were going to have a night out, they might as well too." 

Thomas made a mental note to interview the night guards. Preferably with his whip. Some time between dusk and midnight, it had occurred to him that what the prison guards lacked was the same thing that Ahiga had lacked until now: loving discipline. 

He couldn't discipline Pugh; only Compassion's Keeper could do that. And without Pugh's help, it would take time to bring the day guard to heel. But he would make sure the night guard came under his immediate control, or else prove himself unworthy of the rank he had been given. 

He handed Starke the sheet he had been working on. "You're more likely to see Mr. Pugh before the day shift than I am. Tell him that I'm changing my hours slightly. I'll be available for daily consultation between noon and dusk . . . but not in the morning hours, unless it's an emergency." 

Starke raised his eyebrows but took the paper silently, asking no questions. 

Thomas felt the silence like a punch in the stomach. "The news has already spread, then?" 

"That you've taken the Ammippian as your lad? Oh, yes. There have been quite a few words among the guards about your hypocrisy." Starke neatly folded the paper and placed it in his jacket. 

"Including from you?" Thomas's throat had grown tight. 

Starke shrugged. "I'm keeping quiet. I don't know what to think." 

"Very well," said Thomas. "Think this. I want you to go to bed. I want you to sleep. You _will_ sleep, because you're going to borrow bromide from the medical kit to aid you. And I don't want you taking other men's on-duty time in the future. If they abandon their posts, you're to report the matter to me. Understand?" 

He waited, heart beating rapidly, as Starke stared at the cell door. After a time, Starke took out his cigarette case, removed a cigarette, and tapped it on the case, all while continuing to stare at the prisoners. Through the hole leading down to the second floor came the sound of the night guards' voices as they returned to their duty in a leisurely manner. 

Finally Starke said, "Did I ever tell you that I was fifteen when I joined the army?" 

"Fifteen?" Thomas was caught off-guard. 

"I lied about my age. Anything to get away from home." 

Thomas quickly calculated in his head. "That means you were sixteen when you became a prison guard." 

"Yes, sixteen. Not five years older than you. Four." Starke carefully placed the cigarette back in the case, closed the case, and returned it to his jacket pocket. He gave Thomas a half-smile as he turned toward him. "You won't tell your father, will you? He might strip me of my rank if he realized how young I am." 

"Your secret is safe with me," Thomas assured him. "But I'll confiscate that cigarette case if I find you smoking on duty again, you know." 

"I know." Starke's smile deepened. "Good night . . . Assistant Keeper." 

_Assistant Keeper,_ Thomas thought as he watched Starke make his way down the ladder. Not quite the mode of address that Thomas had asked for, but it would do for now. Perhaps Thomas could figure out some devious means to get Pugh to call him by his title. The rest of the day guards would follow Pugh's cue. 

As for the night guards . . . With his lips thinned in a grim fashion, Thomas set out to meet his next challenge. 

o—o—o

The lad was waiting for him in the prison entryway. His expression showed quite clearly how his interview had gone. 

"No luck?" He began to light his pipe, then changed his mind. Tom didn't approve of smoking within the life prisons. Neither did the prison regulations, for that matter. 

Dick shook his head. His shoulders had the same hunched, defeated look they had possessed back at Williamsport Station. "No jobs available – not for the likes of me, he said." 

"You talked to the day supervisor? Try the night supervisor. He's over there." He pointed toward where Tom has paused to speak to the entry guards. Tom gave him a brief glance, then returned his attention to the guards. 

_"Do you want me to give him a message?" he had asked Tom as they made their farewells at the lake. No need to specify who "him" was._

_Tom had hesitated, clearly tempted, but he had never been a man to give way to strong temptation. "Best not. Just . . . watch over Merrick, please."_

Dick chewed at his lip before saying, "Will you give a good word for me, sir?" 

He had already given a good word, more than a single good word. Tom, who had the softest heart and the hardest whiplashes of any prison guard in the Tri-Nation area, would certainly hire the lad at once for whatever laborers' jobs were available in the prison. But Tom was discreet; he would not so much as hint that he was doing so as a favor to his recent visitor. 

"No need." He put the pipe away. "He'll hire you. You're the sort he's looking for." He tipped his hat, a rare courtesy. "Mercy's fortune to you, Mr.—" He hesitated, realizing that he had never learned the lad's family name. 

"Don't have one," said Dick, who was looking somewhat more hopeful after this show of faith. "Servants don't have last names in the Dozen Landsteads. My mama and daddy was going to pick one after we went over the border, but . . ." His voice trailed off. 

"Medinger," he said firmly. "Your name is Richard Medinger now." He took a step back. "Don't forget what I told you." 

Dick Medinger's shoulders had straightened completely; he had the proud look of a lad who has found his name. "I know," he said. "Keep my mouth shut and my ears and eyes open." He gave a brief, brilliant smile. "I won't tell anyone how I met you." 

Feeling that he had underestimated the lad, he tipped his hat again and turned toward the exit door, which had been left open for him. Medinger had been his mother's maiden name. Why in all of Hell's domain had he chosen that name? For that matter, why had his parents been on his mind all day? 

"We've no passenger trains till tomorrow, sir," said the agent at the Big Pool passenger station, when he stood there some time later. 

"I'll wait overnight in town, then." His leave ended tomorrow morning, but perhaps he would be forgiven a delay in returning to work. He had no desire to show off what he had learned about freight-hopping. 

"Destination?" the agent prodded. 

"Clear Spring," he heard himself say. It had occurred to him, some time between Williamsport and this moment, that he no longer needed his parents. And it had also occurred to him that they might need him.   
 


	8. Chapter Seven

The other night guards were asleep. Thomas, lying in bed, stared up at the ceiling, wondering what Merrick would think if he could see his love-mate now.

It was a useless exercise in contemplation. The chances were high against Merrick ever seeing him again. Even if Thomas should be released from his duties long enough to visit the capital, Mercy's Keeper had made clear that he would never again let Thomas past the guarded entrance to his prison. There was no way to contact Merrick – no way, except through one guard there who might or might not be on his way to becoming a friend. And the words Thomas wished to speak to Merrick could not be spoken through a third party. 

He nearly turned over restlessly in bed, then remembered, and stilled himself. He was still counting up his vices of the night: Weakness in dealing with the guards who were ostensibly under his control. Tentativeness in dealing with the prisoners. Lack of honesty with everyone, including the prisoner he had claimed. And as for his faithlessness to Merrick . . . 

"Sir?" 

Thomas turned his head. Ahiga, who had been asleep a moment before, was now propped up on his elbow, regarding Thomas with concern. At his look, Thomas felt a tightness ease within him. 

Concern. He was willing to gamble that Ahiga had never felt concern for anyone in his life – perhaps not even for his victims, although the Ammippian had recognized the depths of his crime before he met Thomas. Now Ahiga was taking a step further: he was beginning to relearn the right emotions and actions that had been stripped from him in the terrible, distorted training of his childhood. 

He had done so after only one day with Thomas. Ahiga was a quick learner; already he had memorized a handful of words in the tongue of Thomas's grandmother, such as "sir." But Thomas was under no delusions: Ahiga would not have learned any of this under another teacher. It was the bond built between Thomas and Ahiga that had brought the Ammippian this far. 

And the bond of friendship, so tenuous between himself and the guard at Mercy? That, Thomas was less sure of. But he suspected that, in the long run, that other bond, whatever its nature, would have greater consequences – not merely for himself, but for the prisoners of Mip's life prisons. 

At least that man could guess at Thomas's limitations. Thomas need not hide those from him. 

Someday, perhaps, Thomas would figure out a way to make Ahiga recognize his man's frailties as a teacher. Until then – until such time as Thomas could be as honest with Ahiga as he had been with Merrick and the guard at Mercy – Thomas would have to content himself with what already lay between him and Ahiga. Not the bond between two love-mates – no, that much of himself, Thomas would reserve for the memory of Merrick. But the bond between a teacher and his lad was here, in the bed that Thomas shared with Ahiga. 

He carefully tucked Ahiga's blanket around him; Thomas had not yet grown sure enough of himself and Ahiga that he could risk sharing the same blanket with his lad. All that he could offer Ahiga now was a time of bed-rest, free from the horrors of Compassion's cell. And he _would_ give that much to Ahiga. What Ahiga gave back to him was immeasurable. 

"Go to sleep, lad," he said, making his voice as soothing as his touch; then he reached over and turned out the light. 

o—o—o

Keane grabbed him by the elbow, almost the moment he arrived in Mercy's guardroom. "Where have you been? Your leave ended a week ago!" 

He simply looked at Keane, saying nothing, until Keane slowly, carefully released him. Then he returned to buttoning up his uniform's jacket, saying, "You couldn't handle him?" 

Keane scratched his head. "I'm not sure." 

He raised his eyebrows. 

"I mean," Keane clarified, "he hasn't caused me any trouble. But he's been asking for you each day – almost hourly. He keeps saying that he needs something that only you can supply." Keane shrugged. "I couldn't drag it out of him. I suppose you know what it is he wants?" 

He tossed Keane his civilian clothes. "Here. Hang these up." 

"I'm not your—" Keane stopped abruptly, perhaps thinking better of what he was going to say. Instead he commented, "He's sleeping." 

"All the better." 

At that, Keane rolled his eyes. "You haven't changed in the least while you've been gone, have you?" 

"Did you expect me to?" He didn't wait for an answer. Already his mind was away from Keane, toward what lay in the cell. 

His prisoner was not asleep. He was sitting huddled in a corner, holding his face in his hands. He looked up and stared blankly for a moment; then he sprang to his feet. "You're back!" 

He shut the cell's inner door with a bang. His prisoner grew suddenly still. He appeared to cease to breathe as he watched his guard step forward. 

He waited until he was close enough to his prisoner to smell his scent; then he reached forward. The prisoner shivered under his touch. 

He kept his hand cupped upon his prisoner's wet cheek. "What do you need?" he asked. 

He knew the answer even before his prisoner spoke: 

"You."   
 


	9. Historical Note

All of the locations mentioned in this story are inspired by real locations in Washington County in the western part of the State of Maryland (although Indian Springs has undergone a metamorphosis into Ammippian Springs, and Fort Frederick has a new function as Compassion Life Prison). I've done my best to recreate what life was like in Washington County in 1892, with occasional small liberties. My bibliography and links to photos of the locations can be found at:

[duskpeterson.com/lifeprison](http://duskpeterson.com/lifeprison)

The National Turnpike, also called the National Road, was the first federally-funded road, extending from Maryland to Illinois. The portion of the road that runs past Indian Springs was built through private funds. As the story indicates, the road declined in the late nineteenth century, due to competition from the railroad, but it revived in the twentieth century when automobile trips became the great American pastime. Indian Springs remains a quiet little cluster of houses, with a general store. 

The railroad in this story is based on the Western Maryland Railway, originally called the Western Maryland Railroad (WM). More precisely, it is based on the Potomac Valley Railroad, which was owned by the WM in the 1890s. That railroad, which ran from Williamsport, Maryland, to Cherry Run, West Virginia, opened in August 1892, with passenger trains running a month later than the opening. It followed the route described in this story, connecting with the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) in Cherry Run. The track from Williamsport Junction to Cherry Run is still used by freight trains, though the track through the town of Williamsport itself lies abandoned. The train trestle mentioned in the story is near McCoys Ferry; it remains in use. Big Pool now marks the beginning of the Western Maryland Rail Trail; hikers can follow the trail west to Hancock. Further west, in Cumberland, visitors can take a ride on a steam train of the Western Maryland Scenic Railroad. 

The canal in this story is inspired by the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal (C&O). A flood in 1889 – from the same storm that destroyed Johnstown, Pennsylvania – temporarily closed the C&O Canal. The canal was bought by its rival, the B&O Railroad, but contrary to what cynics might have predicted, the B&O proved to be a kind master. The canal reopened eighteen months after the flood and remained in business until further flooding in 1924 shut it down permanently. The canal is now a National Historical Park. Visitors can travel the towpath from Williamsport (whose aqueduct, warehouse, and turning basin remain, just yards from the abandoned railroad tracks) to Big Pool, encountering along the way the path to Fort Frederick. 

My information on freight-hopping and tramps (or hoboes; no strong distinction existed between those two categories of wanderers in 1892) is taken primarily from the writings of tramps from the 1890s: William Aspinwall, Josiah Flynt, Walter Augustus Wyckoff, William Henry Davies, and Jack London. In addition, I gathered facts from modern freight-hoppers who have posted online videos of their experiences, and from modern scholars and fans of hoboes and trains. In particular, I would like to express my debt to Jeremy Cooper, whose Website, _Western Maryland Railway West Sub_ (wmwestsub.com) provides a detailed account of the stations along my characters' journey, complete with historical and modern photos. With the help of his site, I was able to plan ahead of time which parts of Western Maryland to visit while researching this story. 

The dangers faced by tramps were well attested to in turn-of-the-century literature written by the tramps themselves. Jack London, who "beat" his way east as a teenage tramp, later wrote an essay entitled "Rods and Gunnels" in which he offered a detailed description of one manner in which he journeyed:  
  

> I sit down on the cross-rod, back resting against the side of the truck, one shoulder against the cross-partition, the other shoulder within a couple of inches of the whirling wheel. My legs are disposed along the rod to where my feet rest on it at the opposite end within an inch or so of the other wheel. More than once I have had a wheel rasp against my shoe or whizz greasily on my shoulder. Six or eight inches beneath me are the ties, bounding along at thirty, forty, or fifty miles an hour, and all in the world between is a slender swaying rod as thick as a man's first finger. Dirt and gravel are flying, the car is bounding overhead, the earth flashing away beneath, there is clank and clash, and rumble and roar, and . . . this is "riding the rods."

  
A more matter-of-fact account of tramp travel appears in his diary entry for April 9, 1894, when he rode a "special" train, probably on the roof of one of its cars: "A spark caught fire in my overcoat & smoldering away suddenly burst into flames. The train was going 40 miles an hour and it was quite a job to put it out. My overcoat & coat were ruined. I rode the bumpers [i.e. the coupling gear between two cars] the rest of the way." 

The physical dangers of freight-hopping were shared by all tramps. But young tramps like London faced special problems. In an undated letter that was probably written in the 1890s, William Aspinwall told Professor John J. McCook: "They [a gang of tramps] do not hesitate as I am told by Hobos to commit any kind of crime. . . . I was told a young boy probably 16 or 18 y old from Kalamazoo, Mich hapened to jump into a box car to beat his way and there was a number of the above Gang in the Car. They striped the young fellow of everything but his Pants & Shirt, Committed sodomy on his person and then threw the fellow out while the train was running at full speed." However, as Harry McClintock indicated, teenage tramps also received more friendly help from some of the older tramps they met. 

Not surprisingly, turn-of-the-century tramp literature had a great deal to say about policemen, jailers, and prisons. Indeed, much of the later version of _Big Rock Candy Mountain_ contains references to these topics of perennial interest to tramps and hoboes: the song speaks of bulls (railroad policemen), brakemen (whose duties included expelling free riders), and jails. The writings at the turn of the century reveal that tramps had a love-hate relationship with railroad workers: some railroad workers would provide help to the tramp, while others would blackmail or even murder tramps. 

Prison literature from that time shows the same ambiguity in prisoners' relations with guards. Guards could be the prisoners' salvations or their source of unending torment. The choice was made by the guards themselves. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Composed between September and November 2010._
> 
> _Editorial assistant:_ Jo/e Noakes.
> 
> The story was written in response to this [prompt](http://duskpeterson.livejournal.com/105007.html?thread=203567#t203567) by [Shadows on the Sun](http://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowsonthesun).
> 
> This text was originally published at [duskpeterson.com](http://duskpeterson.com) as part of the series Life Prison. Copyright © 2010, 2012 Dusk Peterson. All rights reserved. The author's [policies on derivative works and fan works](http://duskpeterson.com/copyright.htm) are available online (duskpeterson.com/copyright.htm).


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